Nationwide Children’s fellowship program affords the fellows with a unique opportunity to expand their clinical knowledge and skills to best manage the more complex psychiatric patients. During the fellowship, there are a variety of clinical rotations in the both the inpatient and outpatient settings
Update on the Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Nancy Noyes, MS, PPCNP-BC, PMHCNS-BC, Fellowship Program Director
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s pioneers, Nationwide Children’s Hospital developed the first Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner post-graduate fellowship in 2018. The mission of the fellowship training program is to transform the delivery of pediatric mental health care in Ohio and contiguous states through the expansion and development of expert Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners to meet the complex needs and improve care outcomes of the acute and chronically ill child and adolescent mental health population. Since the inception of the fellowship program, we have had a cohort of two fellows annually. Nationwide Children’s fellowship program affords the fellows with a unique opportunity to expand their clinical knowledge and skills to best manage the more complex psychiatric patients. During the fellowship, there are a variety of clinical rotations in the both the inpatient and outpatient settings. In addition, the fellows can develop their own general psychiatry patient panel and have electives in psychiatry sub-specialty areas. In 2019, our fellows had the opportunity to present their Quality Improvement project both at Nationwide Children’s during the Behavioral Health Quality Improvement symposium as well as present at the American Psychiatric Nurses Association national conference. After its first year, our program became the first accredited child and adolescent psychiatric nurse practitioner (NP) fellowship program in the U.S. Our program went through a rigorous site visit by the National Nurse Practitioner Residency and Fellowship Training Consortium, our accrediting body. As a result, Nationwide Children’s program has now been sought out by future potential fellow candidates as well as other academic children’s hospitals who are in the processing of developing their own Psychiatric NP programs. In addition, as the
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Fellowship Program Director, I have had the privilege of training to be a future site visitor for the accrediting body. The Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Fellowship Program will be completing the second cohort of fellows in August 2020. The goal of our program is to retain our fellow trainees at Nationwide Children’s. After finishing the first fellowship year, one of our fellows has stayed and is working in one of our Behavioral Health Pavilion inpatient programs. We anticipate that one of our current fellows will also be joining our Nationwide Children’s inpatient behavioral health team at the end of August. One of our two fellows joining us in the 2020-2021 fellowship year is from New York City. He has served in a leadership role at his hospital and has been on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. His experiences during this very challenging time will add to his learning opportunities at Nationwide Children’s. Not only will he learn from his fellowship mentors and preceptors but also will also teach us many important life lessons which is in line with our One Team hospital mission to enhance our care to our patients to improve patient outcomes. Our other new fellow will join the fellowship after doing her student clinical experience with one of our behavioral health nurse practitioners, Jamie Graham, APN. With the success for the Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner post-graduate fellowship, Nationwide Children’s will be looking to expand the programs in several specialty areas. This will expand access to quality care for patients and families.
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